J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 eBook

In their drawing-room stood a curious relic of another
sort: old enough, too, though belonging to a
much more modern period. It was the ancient stirrup
cup of the hospitable house of Lough Guir. Crofton
Croker has preserved a sketch of this curious glass.
I have often had it in my hand. It had a short
stem; and the cup part, having the bottom rounded,
rose cylindrically, and, being of a capacity to contain
a whole bottle of claret, and almost as narrow as an
old-fashioned ale glass, was tall to a degree that
filled me with wonder. As it obliged the rider
to extend his arm as he raised the glass, it must
have tried a tipsy man, sitting in the saddle, pretty
severely. The wonder was that the marvellous tall
glass had come down to our times without a crack.

There was another glass worthy of remark in the same
drawing-room. It was gigantic, and shaped conically,
like one of those old-fashioned jelly glasses which
used to be seen upon the shelves of confectioners.
It was engraved round the rim with the words, “The
glorious, pious, and immortal memory”; and on
grand occasions, was filled to the brim, and after
the manner of a loving cup, made the circuit of the
Whig guests, who owed all to the hero whose memory
its legend invoked.

It was now but the transparent phantom of those solemn
convivialities of a generation, who lived, as it were,
within hearing of the cannon and shoutings of those
stirring times. When I saw it, this glass had
long retired from politics and carousals, and stood
peacefully on a little table in the drawing-room,
where ladies’ hands replenished it with fair
water, and crowned it daily with flowers from the garden.

Miss Anne Baily’s conversation ran oftener than
her sister’s upon the legendary and supernatural;
she told her stories with the sympathy, the colour,
and the mysterious air which contribute so powerfully
to effect, and never wearied of answering questions
about the old castle, and amusing her young audience
with fascinating little glimpses of old adventure
and bygone days. My memory retains the picture
of my early friend very distinctly. A slim straight
figure, above the middle height; a general likeness
to the full-length portrait of that delightful Countess
d’Aulnois, to whom we all owe our earliest and
most brilliant glimpses of fairy-land; something of
her gravely-pleasant countenance, plain, but refined
and ladylike, with that kindly mystery in her side-long
glance and uplifted finger, which indicated the approaching
climax of a tale of wonder.

Lough Guir is a kind of centre of the operations of
the Munster fairies. When a child is stolen by
the “good people,” Lough Guir is conjectured
to be the place of its unearthly transmutation from
the human to the fairy state. And beneath its
waters lie enchanted, the grand old castle of the
Desmonds, the great earl himself, his beautiful young
countess, and all the retinue that surrounded him in
the years of his splendour, and at the moment of his
catastrophe.